Researchers examined the chemical composition of teeth from a Harappan cemetery used from roughly 2550 to 2030 B.C. The analysis showed that the city was a cosmopolitan melting pot. Many of the deceased had grown up outside Harappa...

Many of the outsiders, surprisingly, are men buried near women native to Harappa. The findings are preliminary, but they suggest men moved in with their brides, even though in South Asia women traditionally move to their husband's homes...

Bones from about 1900 to 1700 B.C. -- more than a millennium later than those examined by Kenoyer -- make it clear that at least some Harappan residents were subjected to savage violence. The skull of a child between four and six years old was cracked and crushed by blows from a club-like weapon. An adult woman was beaten so badly -- with extreme force, according to researchers -- that her skull caved in. A middle-aged man had a broken nose as well as damage to his forehead inflicted by a sharp-edged, heavy implement.

Of the 18 skulls examined from this time period, nearly half showed serious injuries from violence, researchers reported in a recent paper in the International Journal of Paleopathology. The rate of skull injuries tied to violence is the highest recorded in the prehistory of South Asia, the researchers say. It may be no coincidence that at the time of these burials the Indus civilization was beginning to disintegrate and parts of Harappa were being abandoned, for reasons that scholars are still debating.

So, if you have a rich city people from poorer regions will come in and try to take your stuff. (See the history of the 4th Century Roman Empire, or later, the 20th century Rio Grande civilization.)

One way to keep the invaders out is to hire mercenaries. One problem with mercenaries is that it's difficult to sustain their loyalty over a long period of time. A way to counter that is to marry off the mercenaries to local girls. The recruiting poster would be "Come to Harappa, join the army and take a wife!"

Of course there's no evidence of this.

4
posted on 05/04/2013 3:40:04 PM PDT
by InABunkerUnderSF
(Because 2 terms with Jerry Brown as Governor was all I could take.)

Bones from about 1900 to 1700 B.C. -- more than a millennium later than those examined by Kenoyer -- make it clear that at least some Harappan residents were subjected to savage violence. The skull of a child between four and six years old was cracked and crushed by blows from a club-like weapon. An adult woman was beaten so badly -- with extreme force, according to researchers -- that her skull caved in. A middle-aged man had a broken nose as well as damage to his forehead inflicted by a sharp-edged, heavy implement.

The city was besieged, overrun and the city dwellers massacred. Happened often enough in recorded history. More than just plausible here.

The other information gleaned may or may not have anything to do with it. If somehow evidence indicates that it does, then your scenario comes right to the forefront.

City-states rising, becoming wealthy and powerful, sliding into decadence, then becoming unable or unwilling to withstand an invasion and falling seems to be predictably cyclical to the point of inevitability.

Let’s see, half the skulls show serious violence, including against at least one child, and the native women are married to foreign men. That sounds more like the city was conquered, with the native men and children killed, and the native women taken as prizes, than this interpretation they’ve come up with.

It's always been traditional to trade the girls off to nearby tribes. The easy explanation is the death rate was so high at Harrapa that the only way they could maintain sufficient population to run the city and conduct the trade that was its mainstay was to attract serious minded and aggressive men from a wide area ~ and at the same time the women folks would be limited to a single local tribe willing to take the risks of the daughters suffering an early death.

Tribes further away would be busy taking in Harrapa's children ~ more or less like a large daycare operation.

So, who else did this for nearly 800 years? That place is well known as the Republic of Venice!

In Christopher Columbus time it was common for French nobles to farm their children out to Italians living in small villages away from the (for then) large cities and towns. A downside was if your real folks back home died in the palace, or in a local war, then you'd grow up as an Italian townsman.

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